Occupation and land user in medium lower Araguari river basin, Minas Gerais

Abstract

This paper presents the mapping of land use and land cover in the Medium Lower Araguari River Basin, located between the Hydroeletric Complex Amador Aguiar I and II dams, in Minas Gerais state. It is noted the importance of the development of studies in this area, because, in the last years, the same has been affected by construction of dams. This caused several changes in environmental dynamic and land uses of the basin. In addition, the main objectives emphasize the application of geoprocessing techniques and digital image processing, e. g. ALOS/AVNIR and Landsat 5/TM, with emphasis on the use of MAXVER classifier. Applications that used were ENVI 4.2 and Pack ArcGIS 9.3.1. The methodology considers several procedures for the elaboration of use and land cover map, namely: the registration of the images and / or pre-processing phase, training phase, classification and tracking results phase, post-classification phase, mapping phase and validation of the mapping phase, through the realization of field work. With regard to the results, it is estimated that the set of techniques and methods applied resulted a more reliable mapping, despite the scale adopted (1:100,000), due to the length of the study basin (about 1,180 km ²). However, it should be noted that the work will contribute as a basis for future mappings, both in the study area in question, as to other areas, has applications in various environmental studies, such as temporal evolution of the use and land coverage, vulnerability environment, among others. Moreover, the mapping done it is a product that can be used as information for future studies in the Medium Lower Araguari River Basin.